return to work gift
What to give a parent coming back from leave
The first week back is where programs quietly fail. What lands, and what reads as a box being ticked.
Draft — Jessica
We’re here for one goal: to build deeper connections between working parents, their children, and their employers. Join us and help spread the love!
Many Bring Your Child to Work Day efforts are for older children. We’ll help you build a great event for the little ones — age 0–7 — and their parents. Each 30-minute round is filled with fun, interaction, storytelling, dancing, and joy. So every working parent feels included.
Unique events tailored to your team
Delightful programs that celebrate working adults — including their guilt and anxiety — and leave moms and dads feeling seen and empowered. Developed with your People or HR team or your parent and family ERG.
Our three beautiful board books about work, connection, and love are perfect gifts for working parents. Page by page, in bright, imaginative illustrations, children discover all the similarities between their parents’ days and their own.
Families, desks, hospital night shifts, and a lot of bedtimes.
“My hope is to make one more goodbye a little easier, one more bedtime a little richer, and one more child proud of the work their parent does.”
Together with her favorite Creative Directors—her husband and three sons—Jossy created Mommy Goes to Work® and Daddy Goes to Work.
Jossy is the founder of Dots Global, an innovation builder, and currently serves as a Board Member and Entrepreneurship Committee Chair of the MIT Sloan Boston Alumni Association.
When she’s not busy creating the change she hopes to see in the world, Jossy treasures the little moments with her family in Boston and Taipei.
Hearing from readers always makes Jossy smile. Come say hello on LinkedIn.
Gifting ideas, return-to-work moments, and simple ways to make your workplace more family-friendly. Straight to your inbox, a few times a year.
A belonging program for the working parents on your team — Bring Your Child to Work Day in your building, and belonging sessions for your working parents the rest of the year.
An event happens in front of everyone — which is the version people talk about afterwards.
Through an interactive read-aloud, discover what Mommy and Daddy do all day when they go to work!
Dance with Mr. Sunshine to the Mommy Goes to Work song—and become one of his Rays of Sunshine!
Meet Jossy, the creator behind Mommy Goes to Work® and Daddy Goes to Work.
Bring home a book to keep the story—and the conversation—going long after the event ends.
A joyful, turnkey experience for the little ones — ages 0–7 — and their working parents. Each 30-minute round brings the books to life through storytelling, music, movement, and playful interaction. So every working parent feels included.
Built with your People or HR team or your parent and family affinity group. It works on the two things nobody says out loud — parental guilt and separation anxiety — and people leave with something they can use on Monday, not a slide deck.
Bring the Mommy Goes to Work and Daddy Goes to Work stories to your workplace with a joyful, turnkey experience designed for working parents and their children.
Perfect for smaller teams or intimate gatherings.
Everything in Start the Story, plus:
Everything in Bring It to Life, plus:
Add books to any package for $19.99 each. Choose any mix of Mommy Goes to Work and Daddy Goes to Work.
Re-stickable stickers of the story's characters, with your logo among them.
A playful way for children to personalize the books and connect their parent's workplace to the story.
Author Jossy and our early-childhood education team—with backgrounds including Music Together and Bright Horizons—bring the stories to life right in your office!
Final fee depends on location, book quantity, and time of engagement.
Ashley DeJute · Associate Director, Boston College
Kelley Sullivan · Assistant Vice President, Institution for Savings
Caregivers ERG · SimpliSafeYes! Our custom package can include sticker sheets with your logo and icons, so kids can make the workplace scenes feel like their parent’s own world.
Each 30-minute round brings the books to life through storytelling, music, movement, and playful interaction. Kids discover what Mommy and Daddy do at work—and dance with Mr. Sunshine along the way.
The sweet spot is ages 0–7, but older siblings are always welcome to join the fun.
Each round is about 30 minutes and can be repeated throughout the day to welcome more families. Capacity depends on your space and package.
As little or as much as you’d like! Self-guided packages include a step-by-step guide and 1-on-1 virtual training, while our full experience lets us take the lead.
Yes! With We Bring the Magic to You, Jossy and our early-childhood education team come onsite and lead the full experience.
The earlier, the better—especially for custom or hosted experiences. Timing depends on your date, location, and customization needs.
Yes. Card is the fast route for a small order; larger orders usually run on a PO. Both end in the same confirmation.
Most Bring Your Child to Work Day programs are built for older, school-age kids—so the youngest children often miss out on something made just for them.
This free guide helps workplace teams add a simple, meaningful experience for kids from babies to seven year olds.
Ready to run it? Every package comes with books, a step-by-step facilitation guide, and virtual facilitator training.
One email with the PDF. That's it.
Six to eight posts, one search question each. Jessica drafts, Kelly places the keywords, Jossy brings the real accounts.
The first week back is where programs quietly fail. What lands, and what reads as a box being ticked.
Most guides assume a ten year old. A run of day that works for toddlers.
What one company sends, when, and what the parents said afterwards.
Every company sends a onesie. Almost none send something the older child can hold.
The policy conversation that keeps missing the drop-off.
An educator's view on why the parallel structure works on a Monday morning.
Titles and keywords are set. Bodies aren't written, and two of them need Jossy's accounts of Toast and the savings bank before they can be drafted. Posts go live together in September so the Q4 season has something to find.
The return is the risk. Leave gets planned to the day — coverage, handover, an out-of-office. Then a parent walks back in on a Monday and the plan is over, exactly when the hard part starts.
Before the standup, before the inbox, there's a goodbye at a nursery door. That's the moment a parent decides whether this arrangement is survivable, and no benefit on the intranet touches it.
Structure and keyword placement are the point of this view. The writing is Jessica's in August, and this post needs one real account from a company — Toast is the closest.
A gift can't fix childcare. What it can do is tell a parent that the people they work for pictured their family, not their coverage. That's a small thing that changes how a Monday feels.
Something that arrives at the house, not the desk. Something the child can hold, so the story of where a parent goes all day gets told by someone other than the parent. And something that says the company's name in their living room, once, without shouting it.
I had just started, and I hadn't earned the right to be distracted by becoming a parent yet — not until after I nailed a huge presentation, when I finally felt like I had a place.
A few months later I was holding back tears at daycare drop-off, telling my tiny son, "Mommy will be back soon and we will be alright." But would we, I wondered? As he got older, separation-anxiety tears derailed our mornings. I went looking for something that would help me explain what I did after I disappeared for the day. There wasn't one. So I made it.
Jossy Lee, founder
MIT-trained entrepreneur · Board Member, MIT Sloan Boston Alumni Association · mom of three boys · LinkedIn
Drop-offs are hard. Parental guilt is real. We don't pretend it away — we give families language for it. Each book runs a parent's day and a child's day side by side, page for page, so a goodbye reads as a shared adventure instead of a leaving.
Working with employers was in the plan from the beginning — not to hand out a book, but to make the moment a company welcomes a new parent mean something. In that first round of testing, a corporate leader asked about branding it and putting it in the package for employees coming back from leave. The program grew from there.
The family pulled picture books off every shelf in Harvard Square, Kendall Square and the Cambridge Public Library looking for the right hand. They found Nila Aye — a world-renowned illustrator who took a chance on a first-time author.
The process has a name, and it's the one Jossy came out of MIT doing. Over 100 people across the globe read it before it was printed: working mothers and their partners, colleagues, teachers, librarians, career coaches, early-childhood experts — and the toddlers and kindergarteners who had to sit through it. Every page was shaped by a real reader. We called them co-creators, because they were.
The first prototype was made on a dining table and the living room became the design studio. In 2021, 525 backers raised $29,191 on a $10,000 goal to put the first edition into print.
Five years later the same method runs the whole collection — and it's why a company can hand this book to a new parent and trust what's inside it.
Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. Thousands of women in one building, most of them somebody's working parent. We'll have a few copies of Daddy Goes to Work with us — out that same month. Come find us.
Mayor Michelle Wu at the inaugural Working Mothers Summit — holding her own child, standing next to Jossy. She posted the photo herself.
A working mother, her baby, and a story about going to work. The whole thesis, in one frame nobody staged.
Recognized among the country's standout small businesses.
At the inaugural summit, with the people shaping working-parent support.
Honored by the National Parenting Product Awards, and early recognition for the Office edition.
For your family, or to gift to one.
The original Office edition.
For families with a parent on shift work.
Ships in December. Anything in the same order ships with it.
The Office edition and the Daddy edition, one set. Hospital sold separately. Ships in December.
All three editions, one bundle. Ships in December.
17-second snippet
Not only a bedtime one — hum it in the car, put it on at breakfast, sing it at the school gate. Here's the opening; the whole song lands in your inbox, free.
I didn’t set out to build a workplace movement — I set out to make morning drop-offs a little easier for working parents.
Mommy Goes to Work® started as one storybook. Daddy Goes to Work is the next one, out in December — and I’m sending copies to the people whose ideas and enthusiasm kept me going.
If this link came from me, that’s you.
Copies ship in January.
I didn’t set out to build a workplace movement. I set out to make morning drop-offs a little easier for working parents.
Every book runs a parent’s day and a child’s day side by side, page for page, so a goodbye reads as a shared adventure instead of a leaving. It’s as much for the parent as it is for the child.
I love connecting with parents who care about making work and family life feel a little more connected. I’d love to send you and your family a copy.
There’s absolutely no obligation to post. If you love it and choose to share it with your community, I’d be truly honored.
Tell me where and I’ll get it on its way.
For a gifting program, an event, a logo run — or press and partnerships. A real person reads every note, usually within two business days.